Navis rolls out UltraLightClient-based product.

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Canoo Engineering is pleased to announce that its Oakland-based customer Navis LLC (http://www.navis.com) has successfully rolled out the first major Rich Internet Application (RIA) product for shipping logistics: after four years of development, the new generation Navis SPARCS N4 terminal operating system (TOS) has gone live at Lyttelton Port of Christchurch (LPC) in New Zealand, managing the entire terminal operations of this primary deep-water port. SPARCS TOS is the industry gold standard used by more than 170 marine terminals in 50 countries. Delivery of this new UltraLightClient-based version marks the beginning of a new era in shipping logistics.

Darrin Bain, LPC's Information Technology Manager, said: "The ability to provide the application over the Internet directly to our customers and partners eliminates our need to do web development, simplifies the information model, and overcomes the limitation of traditional HTML-based web services. Customer feedback has been very positive."

Navis' Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Jonathan Shields is SPARCS N4's chief architect. Shields said that UltraLightClient (http://www.canoo.com/ulc) was a key success factor for SPARCS N4: "UltraLightClient enabled us to deliver SPARCS N4 with a high-end desktop user interface in a scalable web architecture. As a pure Java library, UltraLightClient mitigates our technology risk and leads to a homogeneous architecture, which simplifies development, testing, and maintenance. We are very satisfied both with the quality of Canoo’s product and their excellent support."

Marc Domenig, CEO of Canoo Engineering, commented: "Navis has recognized the superior industrial strength of pure Java RIA technology. Relying entirely on Java rather than a technology mix including JavaScript, XML, JSP, XSLT or Flash, Navis can leverage the advantages of clean and simple design as well as the fact that pure Java will run on any platform for the foreseeable future."

UltraLightClient – the Java RIA Solution

UltraLightClient enables the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) based entirely on Java standards. It uses Swing on the client, standard communication protocols set by the J2EE container, and standard lifecycle management on the server. In contrast to other more proprietary platforms, UltraLightClient is an add-on library for Swing and J2EE and can be easily integrated into existing web platforms. The principal design of UltraLightClient is based on the half-object and protocol design pattern. Applied to Swing, this pattern is used to offer the Swing API in a server-side programming model, providing rich user interfaces in a web architecture. UltraLightClient-based applications can be deployed in any J2EE container, as a portlet, or even stand-alone without changing the code. On the client, a standard JRE from 1.3.1 or later is all that is required.

Navis develops proven, mission-critical supply chain execution software solutions. The world’s leading logistics providers, retailers and manufacturers use Navis products to institute best practices and drive business success through increased capacity, service and profitability. Navis SPARCS terminal operating system is the industry gold standard used by more than 170 marine terminals in 50 countries. Navis DC Flow yard management system allows customers to institute industry best practices in distribution center operations at more than 100 sites worldwide by increasing visibility across the logistics network and optimizing operations beyond the four warehouse walls. Navis is headquartered in Oakland, California with offices worldwide.

About Canoo

Canoo (http://www.canoo.com) is a leader in Web front-end application development and delivers Java-based software consulting services and products. The Basel-based company is privately held, and is participating in the Eclipse Visual Editor project. Besides UltraLightClient, the Canoo product range includes WMTrans, a software library for language analysis and generation, and Webtest, an open-source, XP-style, Java-based functional testing tool for web applications.

Navis, DC Flow, and SPARCS are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Navis LLC. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.